Ebbets Field Bounce
By Glenn Moss
If my father had followed his natural strengths, he would have become a high school coach or an instructor at a Fred Astaire studio. Both linked by a rolling grace in his walk, either journey likely would have resulted in a happier man. Instead, perhaps pushed by the macro events of Depression and war, he became a diminished Arthur Miller salesman of women’s shoes and a dreamer of deals with other men who found themselves in apartments that were too small and frustrations that grew too large.
One way my father tried to maintain connection with his lost self was to have me accompany him on Sunday mornings for games of handball or boxball. Classic games of Brooklyn that allowed him to move and react in ways that bending down to fit a middle-aged woman’s foot in a pump did not.
An essential part of this connection was my contribution. . .to lose and be the non-athletic kid I was told I was, book smart maybe but having “the common sense of a wet rag.” My awkward lunges and misses, hitting the ball outside the lines of the designated concrete slab or not hitting the handball with enough force to reach the wall, both defined me and him. My misses were his hits; my losing was his win. For all the consequences that would flow from this, on a Sunday morning in Spring or Fall it was our time and I saw my father differently, diving into himself in a way that left regret in its wake, but the splash of memory let him make it through the week.
How I made it through my week was not a subject of interest. Encased behind my thick black glasses and stutter born from the pressures of regret and anger that broke the words on my tongue, I was the small pot for the family’s boil. Each morning, I would walk to school where my sweating inability to speak oiled the friction of others’ discovery and hormonal twitch. And to be the source of coin, or occasional coat, for the taking. One night, on another solitary walk down Ocean Avenue on early autumn evening, I was relieved of my jacket, and when I made it home a bit scuffed and chilly, nothing was asked or said. When you meet a set of expectations, what is there to say.
One Sunday in 1965 or ’66, instead of the Spaldeen or handball, my father picked the basketball. I didn’t remember the last time he had and couldn’t know then this would be the last. It was a warm July morning, and he said we were going over to the Ebbets Field apartments, a housing project representing the quickening changes of the neighborhood. Changes that would soon be wrapped in the term, “white flight,” describing the reaction of white middle- and working-class families to the beginnings of poor and working-class Black families moving in. There were a few middle-class Black families, but they had no place to flee to because racism and northern segregation kept them where they were. Whites could find new apartments and homes in Midwood and Sheepshead Bay or Queens and Long Island, but Black families could not. Many of my parent’s friends would leave in the next few years, but my parents pretending to be middle-class economically, would be the last.
Ebbets Field, the historic stadium where Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers began to end baseball’s segregation. A place representing the hints of the better people we might be and where my father cheered the team, and Jackie too. But the Dodgers left for California and, like almost everyone around him, other changes brought out fears and reactions to those fears. The stadium, torn down by 1960, had been replaced by the Ebbets Field apartments by 1963. Part of the housing project had basketball courts and that’s where mt father and I headed that morning.
It was early, around 9 AM, and my father probably thought the courts would be empty. He bounced the ball as we walked and talked about Dodgers and Giants, the teams he still followed, and about the upcoming football season. When we crossed Empire Boulevard and approached the project and the courts, they were empty. The gate was open, and we headed to one court and my father began to do some layups. He would dribble, turn, and pass me the ball, and I would heave it up, clanging it on the rim of the basket.
This went on for about 15 minutes, and then we heard some voices behind us. “Hey man, what you doin’ here…this is ours…” Turning, we saw five guys approaching, all looking about 15 or 16. They stopped, just looked, and one came forward and took the basketball from my father’s hands, stared at him, started to dribble and passed it to one of the other guys.
The moment of confrontation, challenge and tension extended, my glasses fogged up with sweat and my legs began to shake. My father breathed in deeply and made his decision. He turned to me, said, “Let’s go,” and we walked towards the gate as the sound of laughter, high fives and a bouncing basketball followed us out.
My father muttered something, I think I heard the word, “element,” one of the code words of the time and neighborhood. He told me not to say anything to my mother, he would say we just lost the ball and decided to come home.
We never spoke about it, but I remember thinking something changed or broke in him. It’s not that my father had a clear vision for his future; his eyes always seemed to be cast behind. But an extra weight, a thicker layer of cloud entered that day and never left. There were many things that happened in my family we didn’t speak about, but this one was something only my father and I shared. . .and didn’t. That morning, I began to realize that we didn’t need to speak for my father to teach me lessons both intended and not. How strength and weakness can be confused, how silence can be a grace or a weapon. How being a father is something you need to work at every day. And you still might fail.
My parents never saw it, but those lessons, however buried, weren’t forgotten. By the time it was my turn, it took some digging, sweat, and cursing to uncover and fully bring them into my light and fatherhood. That walk away from Ebbets Field continues, and there’s still dirt to be removed, but my hope is my son can carry some of these lessons with him. He has other things to dig for, different lessons from an imperfect dad, but at least they’ll be his and not buried so deep.
